THE NORTH DURHAM COUNTRY. 3 



Law there never have beeu any collieries, and here the country 

 remains just as it was half a century ago, with hardly a new 

 cottage, and no increase of population whatever. Indeed, 

 the country has only one very small village and two tiny 

 hamlets in its area, and yet it extends seven miles from Lan- 

 chester to the moors, and seven miles, measuring crossways, 

 from Rowley station to Tow Law. There is only one church 

 (Satley, the village which has been meintioned) and scattered 

 farmhouses, and as long as foxes keep within the boundaries 

 of the district they can hardly be headed, for the land is all 

 grass, and one can at times cross it from Rowley to Tow Law 

 without seeing a soul in the fields in winter months. 



Most of this country is a high-lying plain, with little valleys 

 here and there, and less than a mile west of Lanchester you 

 are on the high ground, and the folds of the hills are insigni- 

 ficant, which means that as a rule the galloping is sound, with 

 not too many steep hills to climb. The coverts, too, are small 

 and scattered, and for the most part easily drawn. There were 

 uo big woods until Lord Bute's— so generally called, but now 

 the property of the successors of Lord Ninian Criohtcn- 

 Stuart. — axe reached, a,nd these lie cloae to Rowley station 

 at the extreme north-western corner of the hunt. (During 

 the War a great portion of these plantations were cut down.) 

 Going westward from Lanchester the first covert reached is 

 Humber Hill, a gorse — or whin, as it is called in th.e 

 north — of about tem acres, situated on an open hillside. 

 Here foxes are always bred, and here they are always 

 found all through the season, and a, find here is, as a 

 rule, a pretty sight, for the fox is generally viewed by all the 

 field. A mile further west comes the Woodlands estate, where 

 many good horses, including Scot Free, winner of the Two 

 Thousand, were bred in the eighties. There are many coverts 

 on the estate, and the late owner, Mr. W. B. Van Haans- 

 bergen, though not hunting himself, was a good preserver of 

 foxes, who ent.ertained the hunt, to breakfast at veiry frequent 

 intervals. The Woodlands converts' are beautifully situated, 

 but they have become very open at the bottom of late years, 

 and hounds can go through them when running almost as 

 fast as they can travel in the open. The Sawrm'll Wood, 

 Sheepwalks whin, and Rippon Burn are the best of 



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